Canada’s navy could use a few extra band-aids. On Friday, a pair of ships collided during exercises on the way to Hawaii. The navy is investigating the close-quarters thump that left HMCS Algonquin with significant port-side damage and HMCS Protecteur with damage to her bow. No one was injured, but the consequences aren’t small for the navy’s operational capability.

The ships’ hobbled back to base at Esquimalt, B.C., where they’ll receive repairs. In the immediate term, that layup means they won’t deploy to the Asia-Pacific region, where they would have attended International Fleet Week in Australia, as well as a number of what the Canadian Press reported were “diplomatic stops with the Department of Foreign Affairs.” Now, none of that can happen.

Without HMCS Protecteur, the navy’s hugely restricted on the west coast. Canada’s navy only has two supply ships at its disposal—one per coast—and each can reportedly carry “14,590 tons of fuel, 400 tons of aviation fuel, 1,000 tons of dry cargo and 1,250 tons of ammunition.” If one of those ships is out of commission, the rest of the Pacific fleet is unable to be refuelled and resupplied.

This morning, The Globe and Mail‘s John Ibbitson pointed to the humbled fleet as ”the price the navy is paying as Ottawa drags its heels on the promised renewal of the fleet”—a plan that’s supposed to inject $33 billion into new ships over 30 years.

All those band-aids for HMCS Algonquin and HMCS Protecteur won’t be quite enough to fix up the west-coast fleet. On April 23, an American fishing trawler smashed into HMCS Winnipeg at CFB Esquimalt. This morning, the Ottawa Citizen‘s David Pugliese reported that repairs to the ship—which “include, but are not limited to, shell plate, bulkhead, deck, frame and longitudinal damages, broken stanchions, and destroyed bollards”—will be finished by the end of the year. Total costs aren’t finalized, and the navy didn’t say much more since it’s making a claim against the company who owns the trawler.

At what point do you look at the rest of the fleet and, just to be safe, find a good hiding place somewhere on B.C.’s coast?

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Today’s headlines: Canada’s Pacific fleet can’t catch a break

I guess that the Pacific Ocean, regardless of what the atlas’s tell us, is a whole lot smaller than they’ve been letting on. That’s probably why this little fender bender happened. Just a case of maritime gridlock. I hope that they’re insurance companies can cover the costs instead of sticking Canadian taxpayers with the tab. Because we need to allocate enough money for some stealth snowmobiles so the Arctic Rangers can defend our northern borders against an invasion from all those no good Russians looking for a route through the Northwest Passage.

So the consequence of having our “fleet” in dry dock is that Canada won’t be represented at some big jamboree for navies in Australia in October? Our ships won’t be able to make diplomatic visits on the way? Pardon my naivete but aren’t these ships important for our defense? If the only real purpose is pageantry, shouldn’t we reconsider the expense?

They aren’t important for our defence as no other state threatens us. It’s been that way since the Soviets packed it in and then only if you believe the USSR intended to attack the west.

The ships (like most of the CF) aren’t so much for pageantry as to ensure that officers have well compensated and interesting careers with a good chance at moving on to industry or double dipping as a DND civilian. DND is a self serving bureaucracy that always trying to find ways to justify itself.

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